


everything coming up golden

by butchkirkhammett



Category: Guns N' Roses
Genre: Childhood Friends, Family Issues, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Underage Drinking, Underage Smoking, and his lowkey crush on slash, ft. slash being a good friend, set in the early 80s, steven's miserable life vs his undying positivity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-16
Updated: 2021-02-16
Packaged: 2021-03-18 04:13:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29483502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/butchkirkhammett/pseuds/butchkirkhammett
Summary: “Guess who’s back!”Saul looks up and smiles when he sees Steven again and his hair is longer than it was three months ago, corkscrew curls lying against his collarbone where he’s hunched over his acoustic guitar, stripped shirtless under the late afternoon sun.Steven grins back at him with his whole body. Helpless to do anything else, really, no matter how much he’d like Saul to think he’s cool.or:Steven comes back after getting kicked out of his mom’s house and reunites with Slash.
Relationships: Steven Adler & Slash, Steven Adler/Slash
Comments: 4
Kudos: 11





	everything coming up golden

**Author's Note:**

> posted this tumblr a month ago for steven's bday and thought i'd put it here too! this is possibly the happiest thing i've ever written

His head’s still ringing from that final door slam when he moves back into his grandmother’s house. _No going back. No more forgiveness._

It’s not the first time they’ve told him he’s not welcome back, but this time it feels true. Steven’s had one fuck-up too many a thousand times over, and his mom has finally just. Given up.

It’s a cold realization, and it lingers, even as familiar L.A. heat radiates off the pavement. The chill settles into his bones, so deep in the marrow he forgets that it’s there.

Home’s always been less about the place and more about the people you share it with, Steven knows. He’s known this since he walked up that first time to find all his shit on the sidewalk, he’s known it since he started spending more nights on other people’s couches than his own, and knowing it doesn’t change a goddamn thing.

It still _hurts,_ more than he wants to admit, and it’s no one’s fault but his. What are you supposed to do when your own fucking family tells you, on no uncertain terms, that you’re unbearable?

(Forget it, of course. Unlearn it however you can– booze, weed, girls. Party and lose yourself until there’s nothing left. Until there’s nothing to bear.)

__

–––

__

“Guess who’s back!”

Saul looks up and smiles when he sees Steven again and his hair is longer than it was three months ago, corkscrew curls lying against his collarbone where he’s hunched over his acoustic guitar, stripped shirtless under the late afternoon sun.

Steven grins back at him with his whole body. Helpless to do anything else, really, no matter how much he’d like Saul to think he’s cool.

They don’t catch up or anything, they just pick up where they left off, chatting and prowling the streets as the neon lights come on. Saul refers to his brief absence as his ‘exile to the desert’ and Steven never told him before that he was the one that called his mom begging to be allowed back, and he’s not gonna tell him now. Let him think of it as an imprisonment and not what it really was: another failed attempt at being a good son.

“Was starting to think I’d have to come rescue you,” Saul tells him, shadows obscuring everything but his crooked mouth.

Steven laughs. “Rescue me from what? Normal life?”

“Nah, dude, the fuckin’ suburbs.” He makes a vague hand gesture as he says it, in that particular way of his he has when he’s actually being serious.

“The suburbs are boring, man, but they aren’t–” but Saul’s shaking his head _no_ so he asks, “What’s wrong with the suburbs?”

“There’s just… something’s off about them, ‘s weird as hell. All cookiecutter. I bet everyone there’s way more fucked up than anyone around here.”

“Hey, that’s my mom who lives there,” Steven defends, not quite sure where the loyalty is coming from.

Saul shrugs a little, and Steven can see him retreating from the conversation even as he doesn’t give an inch. To anyone else it would seem like he doesn’t care, but Steven likes to think he knows better. 

“It’s just the place, man. There’s something wrong with that place.”

Honestly, he thinks Saul’s exaggerating; life in suburbia was kind of a drag and everybody was real stiff about the rules and he’s glad to be outta there and back on the streets where music lives and thrives, but he never got that sense of unease that Saul seems to have about it. Not that it matters; already the clean grid of houses and his mom’s tired, empty eyes are getting farther away as the brilliant immediacy of L.A. glares down at him in blues and pinks.

Neither of them were built for that kind of life, he supposes as he chews on the straw of his unpaid-for slushie. True rebels without a cause. He giggles a little to himself as he pictures a modern-day James Dean with long hair and a Van Halen t-shirt. 

Saul gives him a weird look and tells him about his new girlfriend’s mom who’ll roll weed for them and _fuck yeah,_ why aren’t they already there?

__

–––

__

Later, Saul’s sitting with him on the curb, smoking a cigarette because he doesn’t care for grass all that much, one arm propping him up as the other lazily raises the beer they’re passing between them. He sways a little, then leans sideways to deliberately bump their shoulders together. Steven almost bumps him back before he shifts away.

“Hey, ‘m glad you’re back, man,” Saul says from behind the darkness and the ever-growing curtain of hair; says it casual, but quiet, like he’s not quite sure he should admit it out loud. 

Steven’s heart lurches, warmth spilling out of it like a cup and draining into his stomach. It soaks through him completely, _warm,_ and he hadn’t realized how far that coldness had sunk down into his bones until now.

It’s not something he’s ever really heard from anyone before. 

“Yeah?” he asks, attempting to keep his voice steady.

“Yeah.”

And there’s the tiniest hint of a smile in Saul’s voice, and it’s enough to make Steven lean over this time, pushing his shoulder against Saul’s and leaving it there. Saul doesn’t move except to shift his hand out of the way.

Steven feels full to the brim, high on nothing but good California grass and happiness. He can barely fit his smile around the bottlehead when Saul hands it to him. 

And maybe he _is_ unbearable, and Saul will inevitably get tired of him like everyone else always does, but for now he drops his head to rest on Saul’s shoulder and Saul lets him, feels the brush of his curls against his forehead and the light pressure of his skull as he does the same, heads pressed together like they’re stuck that way.

Their combined body heat soaks into Steven’s skin until he thinks he must’ve been set alight. He thinks the glow could light up every dirty corner of the neighborhood. 

Fuck his mom, fuck the suburbs and fuck the endless couches, this is home. 

This, with Saul, sitting on some grimy sidewalk with broken glass under their feet, bodies pressed together as they hurtle towards something, like those burning rocks in outer space. Steven tilts his face towards the sky.

Here comes the horizon.

**Author's Note:**

> catch me on [tumblr](https://metallicasbian.tumblr.com) :)


End file.
